The decision to rename Sherbourne Conference Centre after Sir Lloyd Erskine Sandiford is a good one, and I am happy to see that it was universally supported in Parliament, showing that, as Sir Hilary Beckles said last week, Barbadians have the ability to settle down after controversies, which I interpreted to mean acting first as Bajans before dividing into party or anything else.

At the time of its building there was lots of controversy about the centre and there was even criticism that nobody really knew exactly what to do with it, some saying at one time it would continue to be an examinations centre for the education system and at another time a conference centre. Of course, today, it is politically correct to talk about multi-purpose usage of public buildings, especially in a small country like ours where we do need a very large conference centre, but not every day of the year.

To its credit, the incoming Arthur administration of 1994, after crucifying Sandiford for his wastage of public funds (and, yes, although the project was necessary the allegations were convincing, at least to me, that Sherbourne may indeed had been built with a lot more “steel” than was required), nevertheless set about marketing the centre with great enthusiasm.

Again, the Barbadian common sense at work: We had paid a fortune for it, so we might as well use it. The BLP government pushed hard to make Sherbourne the premier conference centre in this part of the region, and kudos should be given to Jerry ishmael and the early team he assembled to deliver on what seemed a tall order at the time. Today, we accept that, as long as external market conditions are okay, we will get several big conferences a year at Sherbourne, but there was a time when all this had to be developed, and it called for a lot of hard work and a vision of Barbados as a premier place for conferences. But while that may be a thing we take for granted today, as if it were always a simple given in life, it was not always so.

Therefore, while they are at it, why not change a couple of the meeting rooms from those generic flower names, and call one The Jerry Ishmael Room and another The Hudson Wynter Room, in honour of his equally hard-working successor? Give praise where it’s due, I say.

But back to the much-maligned Sandi. Not only was he pilloried for the eight percent pay cut, but he paid the ultimate political price for it - exile into the Siberia of Barbados politics. In political and psychological terms that means losing your high office and having to endure criticism from both within and without your party for your terrible mistake (losing an election), but in physical terms at least, exile means returning to a comfortable middle class lifestyle in the heights or terraces thanks to a generous government pension for your contribution to public service at the highest level.

But the tide turns, as it always does, and Sandi’s successor in 1994 has also joined him in the political wilderness, in that it is unlikely he will ever lead his party in an election campaign again. However, my sense is that Mr. Arthur will never have to undergo the public berating and attempt at humiliation which Sir Lloyd experienced, and it is to Mr. Arthur’s eternal credit that we now attach that prefix to the former DLP prime minister’s name. That is why we are such a great country.

For the record, I would like to add a little two cents to the emerging “these are the good things Sandi do” debate, which I am sure will not be met with silence this time around as it was in Duke Check’s witty calypso. During the last election campaign, speaking under correction, I believe I saw BLP ads saying that the Dems had left the Net International Reserves at something like $45 million while at the end of 2007 they stood at over $2 billion.

It seems like a small matter, but if you accept those numbers you are buying into the belief that the Dems had economically razed Barbados to the ground, and the Bees had built it back up.

But was that really the case? Consider this: A few weeks after the government changed in early September 1994, the NIR to the end of the third quarter stood at almost $114 million. By the end of the year, it stood at close to $360 million, no doubt due in part to the policies and borrowings of the new administration, but a more like-with-like comparison with that figure would be its counterpart at the end of the previous year, 1993, when it stood at $241 million.

While it is absolutely true that under Mr. Sandiford the NIR fell to as low as $38.9 million, that was at the end of 1991, and action was taken to arrest the situation. In fact, it was those controversial actions, primarily the 8% pay cut, that cost Sandiford a lot more than 8% off his own salary. It cost him the government. But one can convincingly argue that those same actions led to the resurgence of the NIR as noted above, thus staving off the fear of devaluation.

By contrast, the highest the NIR ever reached in the ensuing years prior to the last election being called was $1.54 billion in March 2004. After falling from that perch and hovering in the $1.1 to $1.2 billion over the next few years, by the end of last year it had risen to $1.57 billion.

The NIR figures quoted are those categorised as due to the monetary authorities, meaning the funds controlled by the state, and not the total figure which includes reserves held by the commercial banks and other public bodies, which is never used by the Central Bank in reporting directly on the country’s economic performance.

Lastly, a note on the long and unwieldy name being assigned to Sherbourne, the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Conference and Cultural Centre (phew). Could someone “in authority” please consider the need to have a shorter name for marketing purposes? Remember, this name has to roll off the tongue in the U.S., Britain and other countries, where organisations may be considering booking the place for their conferences. So if you must keep the full name in order to pay homage to the gentleman, how about also officially giving it a shortened version, as in “The Sandiford Conference Centre”, you know, just replacing Sherbourne with Sir Lloyd’s surname, or even just “The Sandiford Centre”?

Maybe this is just too simple, because, along with our noble capacity to put down our swords after the battle and sing the praises of the leaders of the fallen team, we Bajans also have an awe-inspiring ability to complicate anything that is simple and easy to understand.